A significant impediment in realizing the full potential of any truck or van having a rear-opening bed is the difficulty one experiences in accessing the entire bed area. In vans, panel trucks, station wagons and similar vehicles, a considerable portion of the load is likely to be disposed well forward where it is rendered wholly inaccessible either by other portions of the load or by the sheer fact that it is extremely difficult to climb within the bed area to remove forward situated objects.
Even in common, every day use, a wide variety of objects from toolboxes to grocery bags are placed on a truck bed through the vehicle's rear opening. However, after the vehicle has been navigated through traffic, these objects oftentimes slide to the front of the bed making unloading extremely difficult. Generally, the operator is likely to be required to climb in and out through the rear gate again and again. There is so little head room within the vehicle that the operator cannot stand erect and is required to maintain a stooping or squatting position while transversing the rear or load area of the vehicle.
Various devices have been proposed for use in conjunction with the rear decks and storage compartments of trucks, vans, station wagons and related vehicles. In each instance, various expedients have been proposed to enable the operator to load and unload the forward and relatively inaccessible area of a bed. However, in each instance, various prior art devices have proven to be complicated, expensive to construct, and, as a consequence, have not been adopted to any significant extent by vehicle manufacturers or by after market installers.
Thus, it is an object of the present invention to provide a flat loading and unloading device which is simple to construct, inexpensive to manufacture and which does not require any modification to the vehicle whatsoever.